Usability testing drives product-market fit by identifying user expectations, pain points, and validating design decisions.

Medical industry
Anne
Lead Designer
2021

About

Laerdal Medical specializes in medical simulation technology and emergency care training products, providing innovative solutions to improve patient outcomes and healthcare education.

Anne is a high-fidelity maternal simulator controlled by software, developed in four different sites: Norway, the UK, the USA, and Denmark. The simulator is the first modular product on the Laerdal portfolio. It is a new version of the current birth simulator, SimMom, built by Laerdal Medical and Limbs & Things in the early 2010s. The user research on the product impacted the development priorities, management alignment, and user experience.

Medical Simulator

Anne is a high-fidelity maternal simulator controlled by software, developed in four different sites: Norway, the UK, the USA, and Denmark. The user research on the product impacted the development priorities, management alignment, and user experience.

Why an advance birth simulator?️

Globally 810 women die daily due to preventable pregnancy related causes. That is nearly 260,000 deaths per year affecting families, communities and societies. A solution that supports in-situ training of Nurses, Midwives and Obstetric Residents, in order to reduce medical errors, improve teamwork and local protocols,ultimately improving maternal outcomes.

50%

In the US, women today are 50% more likely to die during childbirth than their mothers were.

3 - 5x

Black, Indigenous and women of Color are 3-5 times more likely to die during birth than white women.

7.4 million

Globally 7,4 million women yearly will experience acute or chronic illness due to injuries during birth.

Role overview

Spearheaded the prototyping and user testing of the Anne project for software, conversational AI, and Mixed Reality to impact product development and management decisions. The starting point was based upon a research conducted previously.
Research
Ideation
Prototpye
User test
Iteration
Concept design
Collaborated with a multidisciplinary team of engineers, midwives, and designers to explore various concepts for the conversational AI, Mixed Reality, and software features.
Test planningTranslated ideas into tangible prototypes for the user testing. Considered user interface design, physical simulator design, and integration of conversational AI and mixed reality elements.
Feedback and ReportEngaged with medical professionals and educators from the UK, the USA, Norway, and Denmark for feedback. Gathered insights and reported to the development team.

Plan 🗺️

LLEAP Software
  • Online session call via Teams.​
  • The prototype is shared on the function “share screen” and the Participant will navigate via the “request control” feature.​
  • Approximately 30 – 45 min Session.​
  • A form with predetermined tasks and follow-up questions related to the features we would like to test.
Simulator and conversational AI
  • Evaluate the maturity of the hardware and report for leadership stakeholders to what features prioritize.
  • Prototype conversational AI with voice flow.
  • Gather feedback on the implementation of the Conversational AI feature and find what kind of interaction the customer expect.
  • Test execution in Norway, United Kingdom, United States.
Mixed reality
  • Explore the value of the Mixed Reality (MR) implementation on the product.
  • Evaluate the experience of using the Hololens MR headset.
  • Test execution in Norway and Denmark.
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LLEAP Software 🖥️

Ideation
The ideation process for UI design involves understanding the users' needs and preferences through previous customer interactions with the current birth simulator in Laerdal's portfolio.​
Prototyping
The team had the task of creating a high-fidelity prototype for user testing using Figma. In the case of the legacy software "LLEAP," the team aims to introduce meaningful improvements without disrupting the underlying code, considering the challenges posed by its age. The goal is to design incremental changes to enhance the software's functionality while preserving its existing structure.

Conversational AI 🗣️

Ideation
The C.AI technology will create an immersive experience through the second and third stages of birth. The patient will express emotions and tell the amount of pain that she feels. All this is to immerse the user in the birthing scenario. Creating friction and forcing the learners to communicate with the patient. We strive for making different types of voices, like the tone of voice and personality. Depending on what type of scenario you choose, the C.AI will follow along.
Prototype
  • Attach/hide speaker and microphone on the manikin head.
  • Instructor has full control over the C.Al through the browser prototype.
  • Facilitator manually actives the prototype when the user says the wake up word 'Hey, Anne'.
Challenges
  • Design a conversation: early prototype with VoiceFlow to ideate conversations.
  • Development: handover an excel file with triggers of interactions.
  • Errors: design a paths for when the C.AI does not understand the question.

Mixed Reality 🥽

Prototype
Usability testing is crucial for a new medical birth simulator with Mixed Reality features. It ensures effectiveness, safety, and a realistic training environment for healthcare professionals by identifying challenges, refining the user interface, and optimizing the overall user experience.

We built the prototype between Norway and Denmark. The baby model came from the engineering team, a CAD converted to mesh and imported to Unity. The Mixed Reality headset chosen for this test was Hololens 2.
Test goals
  • Identification of turtling​;​Identification of baby rotation.
  • ​Identify improvement opportunities.
  • ​​Validate assumptions of learning outcomes.
  • Validate adaptive learning techniques.
  • ​​Evaluate realism.

Impact

  • Management: The research outcome aligned the project stakeholders on where resources should be allocated to push development forward - reduced the amount of product modules from 12 to 5 combinations.
  • User experience: From the usability testing, during the research, the experience of configuring the product was evaluated and measured through time, pain points, touchpoints, and quotes. The outcome was a UX journey that impacted development on what features should be re-designed on the hardware and software.
  • Conversational AI: The outcome of this test gave valuable insights into how the feature should behave during the Wake Word and what kind of Tone of Voice was expected.
  • Mixed Reality: LIdentified the need for Mixed Reality combined with hardware birth for an end-to-end learning experience.

Report

After the research impacted project management & development, some issues inside the team persisted. This project was challenging because it was involving four different countries and sites. The research brought to light a lot of misalignment, and team members working in silos.

Therefore, in order to solve that and prevent it from happening in the future, this Web app portal was created.  ​It is a Portal where any team member, from anywhere in the world can access and see the latest updates on the project mission, hardware and software overview, and also the people involved. It became a tool to support Product managers make decisions and developers to understand what they are building. Furthermore, it is being used as an onboarding tool for the project.